


Six Birthdays

by beetle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:38:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Phendog’s second annual Happy Birthday ASH Ficathon. The prompts are scotch, tweed, knots and vintage. Six drabbles in the life of Rupert Giles (not in chronological order).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Birthdays

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I'm not worthy!  
> Notes: Spoilers for the series.

**Constants**

  
  
He’s pulled out of the wet London night into a warm, dry flat.  
  
In short order, he’s been divested of clammy wool and tweed by hot, worshipful hands.  
  
This . . . desire cannot last--isn’t love. Familiarity, reassurance . . . a desperate clinging to the few constants their lives offer. . . .  
  
It’s soft lips that share the mellow burn of Macallan.   
  
It’s an irresistible  _need_  that he feels down to his nearly-numb toes.   
  
It’s his favorite birthday gift, for three years running. . . .  
  
His mind’s remarkably useless contributions to the proceedings are driven into the ether when Xander’s knees hit the floor.   
  
“Happy birthday, Rupert.”  
  
  
  


**Puzzle-Box**

  
  
The box was unremarkable, though large; a small, plain card was attached as an afterthought.  
  
In this wise, it didn’t stand out from the gifts he’d been receiving all day. But this gift had literally  _appeared_  in his lap just before the great clock in the front hall struck midnight.  
  
The card contained a brief bit of scrawl:  
  
 _Dearest Ripper--  
  
Congratulations, and happy birthday. Ever yours,  
  
E. _  
  
He never knew what, if anything, to make of  _that_.   
  
But the suit was tweed, tasteful, and ostentatiously free of magicks; the perfect uniform for a newly-minted Watcher. . . .  
  
He never wore it.  
  
  
  


**Ever After**

  
  
“Some things are forever. Eternal, even.”  
  
Just a vampire. . . .  
  
“Immortal.”  
  
A ranting, naked vampire pacing in front of him--occasionally trebled in his tired vision.  
  
“ _Eternal_.”  
  
Yes . . . merely a vampire with the same limited vocabulary and single-minded, insatiable hungers that drive the newly-turned, plus something . . . extra.  
  
“I loved you long before I was turned, and now . . . I’ll love you forever. I can’t help that, Rupert.” It stops pacing and kneels in front of him, gazing up at him imploringly. “I can’t help it, and I can’t walk away from it. I won’t let  _you_  walk away, either.”  
  
And oh, and hasn’t Giles been  _here_ , before? Watched a monster posture and threaten, sermonize and strut in between bouts of torture?  
  
“Be mine,” it purrs from its place at his feet. . . dark gaze, dark hair threaded, already with grey--and cold comfort all  _that_ ’s been abruptly halted--and deathly pale skin. Of course. It’d been . . .  _sired_  February 20th, or thereabouts. Now, in the height of summer, even the faintest dregs of its tan have faded.  
  
It nuzzles its cheek on Giles’s knee like an affection-starved cat, before slithering its way into his lap: a cool, familiar, dead weight. It’s only pure instinct that urges Giles to wrap his arms around the fiend . . . and only a length of steel, triple-reinforced chain that keeps him from doing so.   
  
“I promise you,” it whispers against his earlobe, biting with less-than-gentle, human teeth then laving the bite when Giles gasps. “I won’t try to pull any of that  _Sire-childe_  bullshit, you’ll just . . . be my guy, like you were before. Honest Injun.  
  
“We’ll be together forever.” Cool breaths just over his jugular vein, followed by cool kisses. “Don’t you want that?”  
  
“No,” Giles exhales, certain that his scent is saying something else, entirely.  _Uncertain_  why, after five solid months of this, he’s still bothering to resist. “No, I don’t.”  
  
There’s an awful moment—the  _same_  awful moment as always—when the thing that used to be Xander freezes, then trembles. Some great emotion—rage, or possibly even  _pride_  passes through it, shakes it like an earthquake.  
  
“Aw, it’s okay,” it says finally, leaning back just to grin at him; Giles feels a terrifying gratefulness that it  _is_  okay. As always.   
  
He’s breaking, and they both know that. It can afford to be magnanimous.   
  
“Really. You’re  _Giles_ , you know? You, like,  _have_  to be all brave and stalwart . . . resisting my wicked wiles.”  
  
It giggles. Giles is sure it notes the way his heartrate has sped up. Even if it hasn’t, it can’t failed to have noted how painfully, uncontrollably  _hard_  he is.  
  
Again.  
  
Still grinning, the vampire slides back down to its knees, this time between Giles’s legs, sunnily submissive now that its objective isn’t far off.   
  
“But I’m pretty eternal, myself, so I have  _pull-lenty_  of time to change your mind. Sit back and enjoy the ride, G-man.”  
  
It unzips his trousers.  
  
The torture begins.  
  
Again.  
  
  
  


**Glow**

  
  
While they fuck—and  _only_  after Ethan’s performed some dangerously powerful spell—Ripper can  _see_  the bright tracery of magic in Ethan’s veins, shining under his damp, heated skin.   
  
Ethan  _glows_  . . . he flares and gutters, in time to his own heartbeat—and Ripper’s.  
  
One night, in their darkened apartment, the glow under Ethan’s chest seems bright enough to read by. But only, Ethan insists, because everything in that area is tied in knots, anyway.  
  
Disentangling such confusion would, indeed, be arduous for the fool love-struck enough to attempt it.  
  
Ripper smiles, and slowly works his way heartward.  
  
  
  


**Daughter-Figure**

  
  
His eyes tick from her bright smile to the small cake she’s holding.   
  
“Make a wish--just not out loud!” She warns, with the heartbreaking earnestness of youth. “Trust me.”  
  
The cake is spiny with candles . . . fifty-two of them.   
  
Stunned momentarily speechless, he expects the smoke detector will go off at any second.  
  
And though--in this hopeless, chaotic time--he can’t imagine why  _she’s_  the one to remember something as unimportant as one old man’s birthday . . . he knows he’s never loved her more.  
  
Careful, as always, not to tempt fate, Giles empties his mind and blows out the candles. . . .   


**Gone Wrong**

  
  
Everything had gone wrong between them.   
  
What had once been so promising had died, leaving behind a taste . . . like the ashes of bridges that hadn’t merely been burned, but obliterated beyond all salvation. . . .  
  
But the wine is of a respectable vintage, and the trail of rose petals a rather romantic touch. The note says  _upstairs_ , in a curling script that he wouldn’t have associated with  _her_.   
  
Yet, as circumstances have proved, the things he  _doesn’t_  know about her are quite possibly legion.  
  
Nevertheless, he finds himself smiling.  _Grinning_ , in fact.  
  
 _Happy birthday, Rupert,_  he thinks, starting up the stairs.


End file.
